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Ask Ins Choi to tell you about the moment his life changed and he can describe it perfectly.

“It was the opening night of Kim’s Convenience at the Fringe last summer,” he says, talking about his script that will kick off Soulpepper Theatre’s 2012 season on Jan. 19.

“The final moments of the play, I’m alone on stage with a pricing gun and you just hear it going click, click, click as I stamp prices on the cans. Then the lights faded to black. And there was silence. Nothing.

“I sat there in the dark thinking, ‘Oh my God, they hate it!’ Time passed, I don’t know how many seconds and I couldn’t breathe. Then they started clapping. And when the lights went up, they cheered. There was this wave of love, like I had died and gone to heaven.”

One of Choi’s best features is his incredibly sweet smile, like a kid who got everything he wanted for his birthday and, in a way, that’s just what happened to him that night.

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“I could see friends, family, strangers, all of them with their eyes shining. And I said, ‘It works. They get it.’”

What worked, of course, was Kim’s Convenience, a script about a subject so obvious you wonder why no one had ever written it before: a Korean convenience store.

But Choi was the first one to do it and the show was the surprise smash hit of the 2011 Fringe Festival.

“Oh yes, after it opened, all the artistic directors came calling,” he says wryly, then waving his arms in a martial arts stance, “Bidding war! Bidding war!”

If you know Choi, however, you’d realize he wouldn’t be swayed by money or fame. He went with Albert Schultz and Soulpepper, the company that had welcomed him with open arms into their Academy before he was the flavour of the month.

“Community, that’s what important to me,” he says, looking you straight in the eye and you believe him.

The 38-year-old author/actor was born in Seoul, South Korea, but his family moved to Scarborough when he was only a year old.

“My dad had been pastor of a church in Korea and he set one up here in Toronto after we moved. He is the man who provided my roots. An awesome storyteller. At night to get me to sleep, in the morning from the pulpit. Great stories.”

And the message underneath those stories was the same, no matter where he told them: “God is love.”

“Church was the centre of Korean life,” recalls Choi. “You all grew up together, pot luck dinners, activities at the community centre, trips to Niagara Falls.

“Getting through life, helping each other out. Being there at funerals, weddings, business openings. Everybody always there for you.”

And standing over it all, the presence of Choi’s father.

“He’s always given me a lot of room to grow. A lot of room to run away and then come back. That’s what I needed.”

What about Choi’s mother? He grins. “She was a bit more strict. She was the one who made things happen. Dad would decide we should all go on a trip to PEI, but she’d have to be the one to make the plans. I had two older sisters and we always had a lot of fun. We didn’t have that much money, but we didn’t know that back then.”

He was educated at Brookmill Boulevard Junior, Sir Ernest MacMillan Senior and North Toronto Collegiate.

He doesn’t recall much, if any, overt racism. “I remember one hockey coach not being nice to me. More of a vibe than anything else, but it made me afraid to play hockey.”

But even though there wasn’t hatred, there were differences outside the sheltered Korean community that he had to learn about.

“I went over to my friend Jeff’s house for a sleepover when I was in Grade 5. He was a white guy and it was my first time doing anything like that.

“Man, it was different! They wore shoes in the house. There was a knife and fork at each plate. His mother gave me a towel and said ‘This is your towel.’ ‘My towel? Wow!’”

Then as Choi got older, he had to deal with romance.

“The first girls I knew were all Korean from church and you respected them. But then at school would be the exotifying girls of other colours and that’s who I would date.

“When I was growing up, if you could date a black or a white girl, it was like you had really achieved something.”

Choi was also achieving a lot in the world of student activities. “I went in for volleyball, football and rugby. I was a secret artistic guy.”

They discovered his voice, finally, and cast him in the school production of DamnYankees, where he played the Coach and the prophetic lyric he belted out began, “You gotta have heart!”

Unfortunately, heart didn’t get him into the Fine Arts program at York University his first time out, but he eventually made it, worked hard, toured with a graduating student production to Germany and stayed in Europe afterwards, “just so I could see what the world was like.”

He came back to stereotypical ethnic acting jobs in TV and film, which “was really demoralizing, because that’s what I started to fear my whole life would be like.”

Theatre turned his head around, however. Working with fu-GEN, the Toronto-based Asian Canadian theatre company, showed him how “who I really was and what I really wanted to say mattered in the world of art.”

That’s where he first got the idea of writing Kim’s Convenience.

“I was acting in the play Banana Boys and a lot of us were single and younger and trying to outdo each other, in a healthy way.We were talking one day and the guys asked me what I was working on.

“I didn’t have an idea, but felt I had to say something and I said ‘I’m working on a site-specific show set in a Korean convenience store.’ They all thought it sounded great, so I set to work.”

Choi says that Korean convenience stores were even bigger in the ’80s and ’90s when the local Korean business association would help recent immigrants set up stores without having to learn how to speak English.

“But now it’s changed. Many of the Koreans have moved north and west. Their status has increased and their children don’t want to follow them into their profession.”

The authenticity in the play doesn’t just come from what Choi heard about, but from what he experienced himself.

“My first job was a stock boy at the Minute Mart at the Sheppard Centre. Then I worked in Rexdale at a place called Junk City. No, I’m not making that up. Kinda tough, but it all fed into my imagination.”

And the end result has been that sweetest of things, a first-time hit.

“As a playwright, I want to make people laugh. I’d rather have them laugh than cry, but if you can do both, that’s great too.”

And Choi’s ultimate goal?

“My dream is to play this show in every city in the world where there’s a Korean community, to honour all the Koreans who made so many sacrifices so that our lives today could happen.”

FIVE FAVE CONVENIENCE STORES OF INS CHOI:

1. Kim Grocery: Weston Rd and Black Creek Drive

“This was my uncle’s store. My father worked there when we first moved to Toronto in 1975. Both families lived in the two bedroom apt above the store.”

2. Bob’s Convenience: Parliament and Dundas St.

“This was the location for the store on which I based the play. I’d pass by it on the 65 Parliament bus everyday.”

3. Grange Market: Dundas St. and McCaul (Inside Village by the Grange)

“We did a photo-shoot inside this store during this past summer for NOW magazine’s front page. (Thanks Mr. Lee).”

4. Moss Park Discount Store: Queen St. East and Sherbourne

“Kenny Kim, the owner of this store, was killed during a holdup a few months before his retirement. His story inspired me to continue writing this play.”

5. October Convenience: Roncesvalles Ave. and Marion

“This storefront served as the backdrop for our poster for the 2011 Toronto Fringe festival.”

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